The development of trust and social capital in rural Uganda: An experimental approach

Paul Mosley () and Arjan Verschoor
Additional contact information
Arjan Verschoor: Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield

No 2005011, Working Papers from The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics

Abstract: Trust is important for development but can be hard to build. In this paper, we report on experiments designed to understand the determinants of trust in villages in eastern Uganda, and in particular whether trust can be `built´ by offering insurance to people as a protection against the possibility that the trust they offer will not be reciprocated. We find, firstly, that the effects of income and wealth on trust are ambiguous: trust is higher in the richer than the poorer village, but once association and female education are added as explanatory variables, the wealth effect disappears. Secondly, although the offer of insurance is taken up by a majority of players, this is in most cases not an `effective demand´ in the sense of incentivising higher levels of trust. Effective demand for insurance, defined in this way, however responds positively to high levels of risk efficacy, microfinance membership and female education. Insurance offered in this form, therefore, is on its own apparently not a reliable technology for building trust; but its effectiveness as a trust-building instrument appears to increase if certain complementary institutions are in position.

Keywords: Trust; Social Capital; Insurance; Uganda (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 O12 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2005-06, Revised 2005-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-exp, nep-ias, nep-mfd and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/91/72/SERP2005011.pdf First version, 2005 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/91/72/SERP2005011.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/91/72/SERP2005011.pdf)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/91/72/SERP2005011.pdf Revised version, 2005 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/91/72/SERP2005011.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/content/1/c6/03/91/72/SERP2005011.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Development Of Trust And Social Capital In Rural Uganda: An Experimental Approach (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shf:wpaper:2005011

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mike Crabtree ().